


self (same)

by sybilius



Series: count to ten and run for cover (B-sides) [9]
Category: Il buono il brutto il cattivo | The Good The Bad and The Ugly (1966)
Genre: 70s sweaterboy is honestly just lonely, Anal Sex, Angel's Leather Gloves, Character Study, Drug Use, Drugged Sex, Hallucinogenic drugs, Hand & Finger Kink, I did not research hallucinogens for this don't @ me, I mean. depending on how you interpret it., M/M, Melancholy, Oral Sex, Self-cest, Tweechik Angel has two modes: murder and fuck, mild Bdsm elements, self reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:40:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23804008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sybilius/pseuds/sybilius
Summary: Years later, when Tuco remarks with a wide and blown-pupil grin, ‘But our Angel, he’d never touch any kind of drugs, no sir.’ -- it comes back to me.Once, I tell him. Only once.*An even more bizarre crossover betweencount to ten and run for coverandtalking won’t save you.
Relationships: Angel Eyes (Tweechik)/Angel Eyes (70s AU)
Series: count to ten and run for cover (B-sides) [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1293149
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	self (same)

**Author's Note:**

> Writing this was so inevitable lmao. I'm pretty sure it was Maelipstick who first remarked on how fun Angel self-cest is. Lipstick, if you're reading this, I bet you didn't see sweaterboy coming. 
> 
> Shoutout, of course, to my lovely co-author D, who is responsible for a great much of bringing 70s Angel Eyes to life. 
> 
> For those who would keep up with the main 70s AU timeline, this happens after Alma's death, but before Angel met Susan, or Manco/Blondie. 
> 
> For those less familiar with the 70s AU timeline, Rose is Angel's rather terrifying boss.

I turn the foil package over in my gloved hands again. Empty, now. 

How many minutes more till the effects begin?

I insist to myself that this isn’t maudlin, that this is a genuine curiosity towards all manner of sensation. 

Sensation. Hardly what I expected to make space for in my life.

I’ve chosen a private setting for this ...one-time escapade. A northern cabin in a rural part of New York. Maximal precautions taken to ensure that I hadn’t been followed -- I would be surprised if even Rose’s informants had tracked me here. A day to manage the effects, and then back on my way to New Mexico. 

I tilt my head back, studying the wood grain of the ceiling. _Deus quem punire vult dementat_. One-time. I don’t expect to gain anything from a foray into hallucinogenic drugs.

There’s been little, I admit, that I expect to gain these days. It doesn’t escape my attention that Alma suffered many of the same affectations, prior to her death. I press my fingertips together, suddenly vividly curious as to the sensation without the soft leather between them. My ears hearken to a creak at the door.

Is that my imagination? Paranoia? That’s not meant to be a side-effect, I researched them carefully. Not that my mind needs encouragement. But it seems to be no illusion when the door flies open, the sharp scent of autumn’s early frost overwhelming my senses. The silhouette is of a man in a black hat, a familiar angular profile.

Oh no. Oh good god, _no_. 

It’s a doppelganger. Under this influence my mind has conjured _myself_ , dressed in what I can only describe as a gunslinger’s _couture_. He stares, a mirror for my astonished inaction, and I can’t help but laugh, a low chuckle that cascades into overwhelming, no doubt under the influence of the drug.

This however, is where the doppelganger's imitation ends. Near as quick as I am capable of, he has me pinned to the bed, a cold gun to my forehead. Whether due to the drug or my own slipping grip on sanity, I make no move to fight back, or even quell the laughter in my throat.

“You know, I expected hallucinations bourne of fear to be Rose, not myself,” I manage breathlessly, “Good _god_ , is this to become a personal psychological evaluation?”

My mirror image blinks with a sneer, but the gun isn’t pressed as hard into my temple. I smile involuntarily. His frown deepens.

“Afraid. Who the hell are you, then?”

“Are we not, as it would appear, one and the same?”

“ _Non mortem timemus, sed cogitationem mortis_. You think any woman by the name of Rose is something to fear--”

“A man.”

“No difference,” the gun shifts from my head, loose by his side, “Hell, do you even have a weapon on you?”

“In my state, I imagined it would be dangerous. No.”

“In your _state_ .” He hops off my thighs, surveying the room. I have a partial notion that there should be a television somewhere in the room. My vision seems to be skipping details. The wood grain now has a particular _whorl_ to it. I pull off my gloves, suddenly very aware of the sweat beading on the back of my hands. Mere minutes ago this seemed vaguely unsafe. Now it seems terrifyingly so. 

“Of all the things I thought I’d find here when I got that note,” he gestures vaguely with the gun, which I now recognize as a Remington that might well be a hundred years old, “Wasn’t this.”

“ _Da colpa nasce colpa_.”

The other man frowns, “That’s not Latin.”

“Italian,” I reply. My double seems to have a peculiar mix of the refined and the vulgar in his speech. I wonder what subconscious violin of mine that plays on. I place my hand on my cheek, smooth and warm. The touch shimmers, as if sparks travel down my fingertips. My gaze wanders to my double, who is studying me, both disapproving and apprehensive. I move forward slightly, and the room spins. _Maledizione_.

“Will you come closer?” I ask. He says nothing, the Remington still in his hand-- but crosses the room nonetheless, sitting a half foot from me. Are my eyes truly such dry, fathomless bores? As if the desert itself is making a study of me, watching snakelike as I bring my bare hand to a cheek I've only known from the other side of reflective glass. Dustier. More stubble. Frowns with more -- well, perhaps I have such cruelty. Perhaps I should know better than to think otherwise. 

The corner of his mouth turns up. 

Then before I can even move, his body is pressed against mine, one hand lain across my throat like a brand and his mouth covering my startled gasp. My lips part to his-- I would have expected more familiarity, but there’s _nothing_ familiar in having the breath kissed out of you by a demonic hallucination who shares your face. Everything from the tobacco on his tongue to the rough rasp of his mustache deepens the uncanny nature of the experience. 

He pulls back, his hand still on my neck. I breathe in. He raises an eyebrow.

For all that this incarnation seems to embody my worst nature, he still allows me that politeness. I strain against his grip. He drops his hand.

“Was curious.”

“Two of a kind,” I lean forward, the dizziness almost causing me to tumble into my double’s shoulder. I catch myself on his neck, pressing our lips together again, this time letting my tongue wander lazy and languid across the roof of his mouth. My hand finds his bare wrist, and I run my fingers along the pulse there, pressing hard as I feel his shiver go through me. Not so different after all, then. 

He pulls away, licking his lips as he takes the measure of me, “You’ve done this before, yeah?”

“With...myself?”

“With another man, you idiot.” 

“Naturally, then.”

"Seems we've got ourselves a damnable kind of blessing."

He slips his fingers under my sweater, exposing my skin to the chill of the air. I shiver, though not from pleasure. I turn to adjust the radiator and instead find -- a crackling fireplace, almost burned down. My double is already unbuttoning his shirt, eyeing me warily.

“You can’t move, can you?” he asks, an almost hungry rumble in his voice.

“Not far,” would there be a point in lying to myself? 

"And you're cold. Too far put fuel to the fire?"

"Perhaps."

He jerks his head in the direction of the stove. Ah. There's something of Rose in this apparition after all. But I sense I have little choice in the matter, so I struggle to upright, lurid colors flashing in my vision. The wood pile, just to the left of the hearth, crawls with all manner of shimmering cockroaches. I ignore them, as they vanish when I take a log in hand. The log disappears into the flames. So much for psychological games. 

"You've got my strength."

"Here I was thinking I'd never force someone in my state to take such a risk."

"Oh?"

"It's a risk to you too, is it not?"

"Hardly."

"It's reckless. Unnecessarily so," now this, perhaps, is my own judgement at war with itself. Hardly how I expected this conversation to go. "And in addition, it's cruel."

"Thought the gun to your head would make it obvious. Killing is my business."

"In case my calm gave you no indication, it is mine as well."

The doppelganger raises an eyebrow. 

I roll my eyes, my fingers finding the recently healed scar from that attempt on my life, "Why would I want cruelty involved with intimacy?"

"Pain and pleasure," my double seems to find no specific interest in that scar. Interesting. 

"Pain, now that's a different matter," somewhere I find my own boldness, reach towards his bare chest and twist my fingers around his nipple. The resulting hiss is wanton and desirous, "That was about control."

"Maybe I want pleasure on my own terms."

"What _do_ you know of pleasure?" I demand-- and though I know to the depths of my bones that this other-self will take that as a challenge, I still am not prepared for his ferocity when he pins me to the mattress, working off my pants till I am naked and visibly hard beneath him. He tilts his head, and I wonder if I should stop this -- stop myself? And then his head dips down, his mouth driving all such questions, words from my mind. 

“ _Christo_ ,” I breathe. The ceiling above me warps and bends in technicolor. It’s been months since I was touched. The wound of being stabbed in intimacy took longer than expected to heal. 

But -- _this_ \-- hallucination, in some ways feels more primal, more physical than any fuck I’d ever had. His mouth like a cursed inferno, for all that my skin is still cold as ice. He takes it deep in his throat, that savage pride in his ability that I do find kinship with. Kinship-- among a cascade of other sensations that tear a moan from my throat. He pulls off then, my eyes fluttering open to take in his egotistical smirk. 

“I’d say I know a few things. Can you keep pace?” he lets his legs fall open, an obvious invitation. _Facilis descensus averno._

I work the leather of his belt open, “In a word: yes.”

The abstract thought that this is every sweaty-fingered teenage boy’s fantasy floats through my mind as I lean in to suck what I can clearly recognize as my own cock. The hallucinogen provides a peculiar image of an ouroboros, first in my mind's eye, then tracing out in the hairs adoring my double’s chest, as his head tilts back and a groan ripples through him at my efforts. 

“You do at least have my talents th--” his snide comment is cut off with a gasp as I tease my fingers around his balls while engulfing his length. His fingers find mine -- and here is perhaps the stark difference between us. His are chapped, almost mottled. They drag my other hand along his chest. I have to cough out a gasp, even with my lips around his mouth and his hips buck to my throat in a way I swear is intentional. 

I pull my mouth away, half-intending to give him hell for attempting to choke me-- but his fathomless eyes lock in to mine as he brings my hand to his mouth. My protests catch with my breath, the curious probing of his tongue along my index an intoxicating sensation. When he presses his thumb to my wrist, as I did, the effect on me is yet more dramatic, I near curl into his touch. Good god. 

He drops my hand, “Now. You’re going to fuck me.”

That surprises me to the point where I protest-- which may be selfish on my part, “You’re certain you want to be the receiving partner? With my unsteadiness--”

“Know what I want, yeah,” he tosses me a bottle of a strong, strange smelling oil, kneeling with his ass presented like an offering. Yes, there is absolutely something psychologically troubling about all this, but my body is too frenetic with sensation to turn back now. 

I press a finger, even two into the tight pucker of his entrance, but he shakes his head, drawing away, “Just fuck me, all right.”

“Pain, with pleasure then,” I drive the length of my cock straight into him, suppressing my own gasp to the sound of his.

“Yeah-- _christ_ \--” 

From the snap of his hips, he demands a much more frantic pace than I would-- and why the hell not, from the way it reverberates into my vision like fireworks. A fevered moan tears from my lips, and he gasps beneath me, shooting his release into the thin quilt. It surprises me-- but then again, I suppose I had been close in moments as well. I stumble free as he collapses, collecting his breath. 

To pleasure myself, in a word. That could be enough. He blinks, his fucked-out pupils turning to a displeased frown when he sees me placidly watching him. 

“It’s all right,” I say, inexplicably.

He shakes his head, “Lie back.”

When I tilt my head in answer, he huffs out a harsh breath, then pins me down in a tangle of limbs. In the firelight his face, my own, looks near skull-like. Not even a little death and I wonder-- have I slipped into hell? Then he slips my cock inside him and my brain stops providing idle questions. 

He starts at a pace too harsh, the same as the one that had him gasping in minutes-- I reach for him, and he grabs my hands, pinning my wrists to the pillows beside me. But he meets my gaze, seeming to understand, and slows to a punishing roll. It’s then that the heat building in me seems to relax, any reservations I had melting away. 

After all, he must know me. In spite of our differences. 

Every movement under his careful gaze seems to bring me closer to an indefinite edge, my senses near screaming. He pauses, and I very nearly do scream. I wonder if he would have me beg. 

"What the hell are you holding back for? With me?"

Before I can answer the question, he leans past my face to my right hand, dragging his teeth along the sensitive veins of my wrist. The sudden thrust takes me under at last, the last burst of pleasure ripped from the core of me to be met by…no one but myself. 

_Maledizione._ How preposterous for this to be the best sex I've had in months. Or ever.

As the warmth shimmers over the edges of my skin, my vision sparking like Roman candles, a warm hand finds its way to my neck again. He kisses with such urgency, intensity -- drawing pleasure out of me like venom from a bite. I wonder if at my most passionate I could hope to elicit such a response. 

My eyes flutter open to meet -- my own. His. It is impossible to conceptualize the feeling of being seen by your own _self_. If I’d believed I’d achieved it before this moment, I was utterly mistaken. A tremor grows within me. I am not altogether confident it has anything to do with the drugs, now. My double frowns, catching his breath.

“What the hell’s the matter?”

“I --” the words die in my throat, which tightens uncomfortably. He moves away, staring. Somehow the cold that leaves manages to steady me, “Nothing. Nothing wrong simply -- a way of being seen and loved I had not realized I was unused to.”

He laughs, a bitter bark, “We fucked. Might have been interesting, but that’s it.”

“Perhaps, but I--” the thought spins out on my heavy tongue, even as he seeks his clothing with an air of detachment, “Would you say it is easy for you to love yourself? I thought I could, but I’m less sure now.”

“ _Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest_ _,_ ” my double studies me with a mix of pity, fear, and fascination. How clearly I can read the expressions of my own face, “Stupid question, if you ask me. Course it’s easy.”

“I’m not sure I envy that or no.”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

Such savage pride in his voice. I draw my bare knees to my chest, thinking of my younger self. 

“To not want for anything from others? There’s appeal in it. Something I’ve missed, perhaps.”

“Damn straight.” 

I do study him with a kind of pity, as it comes to me that it is not, perhaps, that this man knows more than I -- but that he has chosen to know less. Or never been given the chance. 

“I think, perhaps -- what I most hope, is that such a thing is never offered to you. That you never crave this as I do.”

“I won’t.” It’s in that fractional, two-word retort that I catch a flash of motion-- the Remington. Gives me just enough time to duck when he takes the shot-- but not fast enough. 

There’s a blinding pain in my forehead, dear _God_ this is far more poetic than I ever expected. My eyes roll back, seeing nothing but color, no sound but his furious laughter -- 

Contradiction; I wake. 

I wake, sit up, utterly alone. Television set with a tilted antenna atop it, radiator beside me. It’s turned to morning, by the light that filters through the thin lace curtains. The chirp of distant birds not native to New Mexico grinds in my ears. 

My head throbs. I press my fingers to my own lips, but feel nothing but absence from my touch. Alone, again, with myself. It must be a permanent affectation. 

As I was, then. 

I collect the discarded foil from the counter, drink a glass of water, and resign myself to unpacking the firearms from my suitcase. 

**Author's Note:**

> Latin/Italian translations:
> 
>  _Deus quem punire vult dementat_ \- Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. Latin.
> 
>  _Non mortem timemus, sed cogitationem mortis_ \- We do not fear death, but the thought of death (Seneca). Latin.
> 
>  _Da colpa nasce colpa_ \- Deep calls to deep. Italian. Those familiar with _talking won't save you_ may recognize this as the equivalent to Tweechik Angel's _abyssus abyssum invocat_.
> 
>  _Facilis descensus averno._ \- The descent into hell is easy. Latin.
> 
>  _Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest_ \- Let no man belong to another who can belong to himself. Latin.
> 
> ...now I need the story of Angel explaining this shit to his lovers in the gatehouse era lmao. 
> 
> As usual, comments welcome. You can have a little kinkshaming. As a treat. Lord knows I deserve it ;)


End file.
